


itsy bitsy

by Herondales



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aged-Up Peter Parker, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Battle of New York (Marvel), Gen, i mean he's 14 so he's still a babby but he's old enough to fling himself at aliens i guess, in which midtown tech is actually in midtown manhattan aka the epicenter of the chitauri invasion, we throwin it back to 2012 gang!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 10:41:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19149388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Herondales/pseuds/Herondales
Summary: ... in which Peter Parker fights aliens as a teenager (and not even in a video game) and is sort of good at it? At least, good enough to save Iron Man's life, help take down a few ships, and lives to tell the tale. Did he mention he saved Iron Man?





	itsy bitsy

 

**MAY 4TH, 2012**

 

_MIDTOWN SCHOOL OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY_

"Parker?"

"Present."

His voice betrays exactly how eager he is for summer vacation. Not even an excursion to NYU can rid him of the ennui of freshman year, not when freedom is so close.

The bus is parked outside, idling while teachers take attendance and fret over details that have been hammered into them since the first outing this year. His classmates hum with excitement — mostly for the games they'll play on the way over, placing bets on who will do the stupidest thing and get themselves detention within the first ten minutes off campus.

Peter is not very high on the list, but he's still on it. He has mixed feelings about the recognition, though he hasn't been paying much attention to what everyone's talking about, locked up in his own thoughts.

A chill sweeps over him unexpectedly. His head swivels immediately to the window; he's watching the sky when a massive _BOOM!_ sounds from the opposite direction. The lights flicker but stay on as Ms. Warren runs into the hall, ordering the class to stay put — but Peter's already up and following her, slipping out unnoticed as everyone else rushes the window.

The halls are in mild chaos, teachers and students scrambling to get into locked classrooms as if preparing for a code red. Another crash sounds outside — this time, the whole building trembles around them. That sends Peter off in a sprint to the spare locker where he keeps his suit, his shooters.

Peter Parker may not know what's going on, may not be able to help, but Spider-Man can definitely figure it out and get to work. Sneaking off to the empty robotics lab he uses to change, his nerves jump less as soon as he's in his home-sewn red and blues, fastening his web shooters.

The lights flicker... then fade out abruptly, leaving the building in darkness. It does nothing to slow him down as he climbs out through a third floor window and finally sees what's going on around him.

He's off before he can really wrap his head around what he's seeing, headed north towards the tear in the sky.

 

* * *

 

_MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NEW YORK_

Up until this point, Peter can count on his hands how many times he's seen his life flash before his eyes.

 

_It's short. Sweet. Slightly radiated. To the point._

He can tell immediately when he's gotten where he needs to — though, honestly, doesn't exactly _want_ — to be: there's an actual _wormhole_ above Stark Tower, branches of lightning arc wildly through the sky, and the forecast forgot to mention the overall likelihood of a _real life alien invasion_.

 

The weather guy really fucked this one up.

It becomes clear very quickly that he's out of his league, even with the new formula in his shooters, even after swinging from building to building as quickly as he could intent on doing something, _anything_ to help. There are too many of them — opponents and innocents caught in the crossfire, movement from all sides, beings in the sky and ones crawling over skyscrapers and yet others rounding people up on the ground. It's overwhelming — the high-pitched screams of the alien weapons, car horns blaring, crowds running for any kind of shelter they can find. Soot and smoke fill the air, burnt ozone plugging his nose.

Peter helps a family out of the wreckage of their van, watching as their faces turn from skeptical to terrified to relieved as they watch him twist metal with his gloved hands as if it's cardboard. Finished, he sits hard on the ground by what remains of their bumper and just _breathes_ — he can do this, he knows he can, and he knows he has to if he's ever going to prove it to anyone that Spider-Man isn't a fantasy.

 _In-two-three-four._  He just needs to clear his head first. _Out-two-three-four._

Once he can concentrate on his immediate surroundings again, filtering through the wildly fluctuating sensory input of close encounters of the first, second, third, and forty-eighth kind, he stands. Something not a block away catches his attention first — a blaring police radio, veiled in laser and gunfire. It speaks about establishing a perimeter, _Captain's orders_.

He already knows he can't go any closer to the tower, to where the fighting has to be thickest. The blue beam of light pouring straight up into the rift from which the aliens wreak havoc is surrounded, and also seems to be the source of the lightning storm.

His combat skills are relatively untested; he doesn't...

He has to go home to May, and he won't if he does something that stupid. If he dies, May will kill him. But he has to help make sure no aliens get through that perimeter, on the ground and in the sky, because he knows he can that much.

Another chill shakes him from his new goal, pulling his attention to where a mass of electric green roars to his right _. The Hulk_ , in the flesh, smashes his way through two of the alien gliders before hurling himself back up a building. Peter considers following — _safety in numbers_ — but then thinks back to the news coverage a few years ago when the Hulk rampaged through Harlem.

 

_Stranger danger_ , right.

He wonders, for a second, who else is out there fighting — Iron Man, of course, has to be there soon if he's not already. Stark Tower is the epicenter for whatever is letting the aliens through, Peter guesses, so he'd imagine Iron Man might take this one a little personally.

The odds don't seem so chillingly stacked against them when he thinks about Iron Man, Hulk, and a little spider picking off aliens.

With a _thwip_ , Peter makes a break for the perimeter.

 

* * *

 

There are a few aliens crawling past the line when Peter gets there, but he manages to web them to the asphalt before they get further. A bolt from a blaster gets too close for comfort and nearly topples him from his perch on a crooked lamppost — "Holy fu..."

Clambering back up, the sky is suddenly black with a new swarm of flyers flanking a massive evil ship worming its way between two buildings.

He feels like this is the moment where an obviously fake xenomorph holograph should descend in a beam of light and let him know that this is all an extremely realistic dream. Hanging halfway on the lamppost, Peter squeezes his eyes shut under his goggles and opens them again. His hands aren't free. He can't pinch himself.

 

It's also not a dream.

A new color of sound fills the air, high-pitched and high-intensity. He almost finds the source of it before a squadron of flyers seem to take issue with his, uh, _hanging out_ and turns towards him. It's as exhilarating to swing from the post through the air as it is to fly feet-first into three aliens in quick succession. The adrenaline coursing through him levels everything out, he thinks. The aliens hit the ground with a noise Peter wishes he could immediately unhear, grimacing at both the squelch and the way their gliders unexpectedly turn and smash right into the evil worm.

Which is now headed directly towards him.

His first instinct is to climb, scaling a skyscraper in what feels like record time. At least then he'd be able to avoid debris, hopefully, if the thing decided to cut through a building.

Those same bright sounds fill his ears once more. this time, Peter spots the source — red and gold, both repulsors firing at the mechanical beast head on. The worm doesn't slow down at all at first, still charging through the air, tail thrashing wildly against the buildings on either side. Something smashes into Iron Man right as he shoots out the biggest rocket Peter's ever seen up close — fully modular, assembling itself as if by magic.

The rocket stays its course, hitting its target in a soft spot of flesh that sends it hurtling to the ground. Iron Man...

Iron Man is

    f a l l i n g

        out of the sky.

Peter acts without thinking, narrowly avoiding a chunk of falling starmetal when he leaps from the roof. He catches Iron Man around the middle, hot armor making it difficult to hold onto him, the weight of the suit crushing the breath from his lungs before he flings a hand out to swing them back around.

Their momentum carries them straight through a window. Glass slashes part of his sleeve as he's the first one through, but he manages to twist just in time to escape being crushed by Iron Man's weight. He's on his feet shaking glass from his clothes almost instantly,

Whatever'd knocked him out of the sky doesn't seem to have done permanent damage, because soon Iron Man is standing, too, and surveying their surroundings as if—

He'd just saved Iron Man. Kind of. Pretty much. In a hoodie, and using only his junk heap web shooters.

_Huh._

He stands there dumbstruck for a second before another creature roars just outside. This is... He's not... He'd gone to the perimeter to pick oitsyff stragglers as he could, not to directly engage with his superhero-role-model-science-god-celebrity-crush. It's almost more overwhelming to see Iron Man in the scraped up flesh than it had been to discover that _yes, Virginia, there is an alien invasion happening in New York City._

Right.

_That._

"So... you're welcome and, uh, by the way, that rocket was so insane! K-keep up the good work, Iron Man!" he fights to keep his voice level, even as he literally climbs out the wreckage of the window and slides down the glass side of the building before he even finishes.

(Tony can't even get a word in. He just blinks a few times at the spot where the kid had just been. Before casually hopping out of the broken window. "What... the _fuck_? JARVIS, bookmark that footage for later.")

 

* * *

 

He's too far away to catch him the second time he falls. It's lucky that someone else does. Peter still shakes just thinking about it — watching helplessly from a rooftop while Iron Man disappears into space.

He resigns himself to watch desperately for news about what happened, for more details, _anything_. But he knows he can't stick around and find out. Can't check in.

May will _kill him_ if she finds out about this, if he's seen and somehow identified even with most of his mask intact. Web shooters wasted and hoodie having seen better days, he plucks the ugliest things he can find from a laundry line hung precariously from a fire escape and starts the long walk to Queens.

**Author's Note:**

> might make this a series if y'all like it! 
> 
> 1/4/20 - gonna work on more for this story. stay tuned~


End file.
